brooks biplane

[David Davis]

Good Morning Hamish! I remember being impressed by the photograph of the Brooks Biplane in the Aeromodeller Plans Handbook when I was twelve years old! I even had the plan for a while before realising that I was never going to have the time to build it so I left it in the club's Boot Hill Corner and somebody took it away. People seemed to like giving me incomplete models to finish, indeed I was offered a Jodel free gratis only yesterday!

How you finish and power your model is of course up to you but I think that the first question which you have to make a decision about is, "Do you want a model which you reserve for High-Days and Holidays or do you want something as a more everyday flyer?"

If the former then a model finished in tissue would be very authentic but I don't need to tell a modeller as experienced as yourself that tissue is easily punctured and it soon begins to look awful if covered in repair patches. This means that you have to be especially careful in storing and transporting the model not to mention keeping it out of the stubble on landing.

However, you can strengthen tissue by covering the model in laminating film first then applying the tissue over the top. I have never done this myself because I'm too lazy to be bothered with covering a model twice but there is plenty of information about it on this thread:  https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1843370-Doculam-and-Laminating-films-for-model-covering

Other options include Litespan which I have used, which is a plastic polymer which is very light and is said to look like tissue and but which is far stronger. Picture of my Veron Cardinal below. Litespan is made by Solarfilm who also make a product called Airspan, which again I've never used, but it is said to resemble tissue even more than Litespan but the Fundamentalists may disagree! You have to use dope on Airspan.

If I were building a full-sized Brooks Biplane I'd cover it in so-called Vintage Solartex, the type which is translucent, and which is said to look like doped nylon. Again, the Fundamentalists would claim that it's nothing like doped nylon but it looks alright to me. Solartex is a very easy product to use and it could be used even on your reduced size Brooks at the expense of a slightly higher flying speed.

Moving on to engine power, as Broken English has suggested, please don't use an engine which is only just capable of flying the model. One of my most abiding memories is of standing on a crowded flight line with four or five others one beautiful summer's day while somebody's inadequately powered vintage model droned about at head height just above the stall until it finally gained enough height to clear us. The owner was told in no uncertain terms to fit a more powerful engine.

Your Saito 30 will probably power your reduced-size Brooks. It will certainly power a Junior 60 very nicely. Broken English's superb lightweight Junior 60 was so impressive that I just had to weigh mine. While his weighed 44ozs, mine weighed 77ozs! Over two pounds heavier! It is covered in Solartex, rather than tissue, ordinary opaque orange Solartex which just happened to be handy when I recovered it over twenty years ago. For some reason I never got round to recovering the tail! I was planning on re-covering it this winter but my clubmates have said that it should retain its patina of age! It has of course had many flights including giving many nervous elderly beginners their first taste of radio controlled flight.

Oh and by the way, lest anybody think that I build super-heavy, 77ozs is only 1 ounce heavier than the weight printed on the kit box.

Edited By David Davis on 09/02/2017 06:42:50